Chinese laundry soap ad shows man “washed” from black to Asian

Dear Racist Commercial,

We gotta talk…

-Your Black Friend

Donald Trump ‘was the firestarter’ when he called for the death penalty in the 1989 Central Park jogger case, says Yusef Salaam, one of the wrongfully convicted Central Park Five: ‘To see that he has not changed his position of being a hateful person … what would this country look like with Donald Trump being the president? I can’t even imagine’

Prince talks about his childhood

PRINCE on Tavis Smiley

PRINCE on The Arsenio Hall Show FULL EPISODE

Capitol Theatre 1982

Prince’s Welcome 2 America Tour

Prince Rogers Nelson (June 7, 1958 – April 21, 2016) was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and actor. Prince was renowned as an innovator, and was widely known for his eclectic work, flamboyant stage presence, and wide vocal range. He was widely regarded as the pioneer of Minneapolis sound. His music integrates a wide variety of styles, including funk, rock, R&B, soul, hip hop, disco, psychedelia, jazz, and pop.

Prince was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and developed an interest in music at an early age, writing his first song at age seven. After recording songs with his cousin’s band 94 East, 19-year-old Prince recorded several unsuccessful demo tapesbefore releasing his debut album For You in 1978, under the guidance of manager Owen Husney. His 1979 album Princewent platinum due to the success of the singles “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?” and “I Wanna Be Your Lover“. His next three records—Dirty Mind (1980), Controversy (1981), and 1999 (1982)—continued his success, showcasing Prince’s trademark of prominently sexual lyrics and incorporation of elements of funk, dance, and rock music. In 1984, he began referring to his backup band as The Revolution and released Purple Rain, which served as the soundtrack to his film debut of the same name. A prolific songwriter, Prince in the 1980s wrote songs for and produced work by many other acts, often under pseudonyms.

After releasing the albums Around the World in a Day (1985) and Parade (1986), The Revolution disbanded and Prince released the critically acclaimed double album Sign “O” the Times (1987) as a solo artist. He released three more solo albums before debuting The New Power Generation band in 1991. He changed his stage name in 1993 to an unpronounceable symbol , also known as the “Love Symbol”. He then began releasing new albums at a faster pace to remove himself from contractual obligations to Warner Bros.; he released five records between 1994 and 1996 before signing with Arista Records in 1998. In 2000, he began referring to himself as “Prince” again. He released 15 albums after that; his final album, HITnRUN Phase Two, was first released exclusively on the Tidal streaming service on December 11, 2015.

Listen: Here’s what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has to say about black students at elite colleges.

It’s ironic that he’s being remembered during black history month, isn’t it?

Via www.cnn.com: Washington (CNN)The Supreme Court on Friday released audio of controversial comments made by Justice Antonin Scalia suggesting that some African-Americans might be better off at “less-advanced”universities, language that has caused a national uproar and spurred condemnation from elected officials including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and Rep. John Lewis.

“There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well,” Scalia said Wednesday during oral arguments in a case involving a race-conscious college admissions plan. The 79-year-old justice, speaking to a hushed courtroom, then referenced a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the case. “One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas,” he said, “they come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them.”

Scalia said he wasn’t “impressed” that the University of Texas may have fewer African Americans. “Maybe it ought to have fewer. And maybe some — you know, when you take more, the number of blacks, really competent blacks admitted to lesser schools, turns out to be less.”

Reid took to the Senate floor Thursday to condemn Scalia’s statements. Lewis, a civil rights icon who marched in Selma, released a statement saying he was “shocked and amazed” by Scalia. “His suggestion that African Americans would fare better at schools that are ‘less advanced’ or on a ‘slow track’ reminds me of the kind of prejudice that led to separate and unequal school systems—a policy the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional decades ago,” Lewis said.

On Friday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Scalia should recuse himself from any case before the high court involving discrimination.

“It’s so disappointing to hear that statement coming from a justice of the Supreme Court,” she told Politico. “It clearly shows a bias.”

Janai Nelson, associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, was sitting in court when Scalia spoke.

“My first reaction was disbelief and disappointment,” Nelson said. “In a case with this much significance, for a Supreme Court justice to make comments that amplify the myth of racial inferiority, is deeply disheartening.”

Scalia’s comments have also spawned a protest Twitter hashtag, #StayMadAbby, where African-Americans have posted pictures of themselves celebrating their college graduations.

The court does not allow video into the room or any type of live broadcasts of oral arguments and only releases audio at the end of each argument week. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have pressured justices to permit live video, with no success.

‘Mismatch’ theory

While Scalia’s words reverberated outside the legal world, they were familiar to some of those who have been following the legal challenge to affirmative action in higher education.

One person who had no visible reaction to Scalia was Justice Clarence Thomas, who rarely speaks during oral arguments.

While Thomas and Scalia don’t agree on every case, they agree quite a bit.

Thomas, the only African American on the bench, has made clear that he thinks public universities should not take race into consideration. He dissented from a 2003 case that upheld the admissions program at the University of Michigan Law school.

And as for the lawyer who Scalia was addressing, Gregory S. Garre, he took the question in stride and was quick to respond forcefully. Garre, the former solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration, is defending the University of Texas against a challenge from Abigail Fisher, a white woman from Texas who is suing the university arguing she was denied admission based on her race.

“Frankly, I don’t think the solution to the problems with student body diversity can be to set up a system in which not only are minorities going to separate schools, they’re going to inferior schools,” Garre said in response to Scalia.

Garre has defended the university before the court on two separate occasions. Like others immersed in the affirmative action debate, he likely recognized that Scalia was referring to the controversial “mismatch” theory popularized by UCLA law professor Richard Sander and legal journalist Stuart Taylor Jr. in their book, “Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s intended to Help, and why Universities won’t admit it.” They filed a brief in the case, as did Gail Heriot of the University of San Diego School of Law.

“Research indicates that students who attend schools where their entering academic credentials put them towards the bottom of the class are less likely to succeed then similarly-credentialed students attending schools where their academic credentials more closely ‘match’ the typical student’s,” Heriot wrote.

Heriot was not in court to hear Scalia, but she read a transcript of arguments and she defends Scalia’s comments. “He was trying to articulate the extensive literature that shows race-preferential admission policies end up hurting rather than helping their intended beneficiaries, especially in the area of science and engineering,” she said afterwards.

“We do ourselves a great disservice when we jump all over people for failing to phrase a question in the best possible way,” Heriot added.

The first time the Fisher case was heard by the court in 2012 the justices issued a very narrow opinion and sent the case back down to the lower court to take another look.

In a concurring opinion, Thomas echoed the mismatch theory. “The University admits minorities who otherwise would have attended less selective colleges where they would have been more evenly matched,” Thomas wrote. “But, as a result of the mismatching, many blacks and Hispanics who likely would have excelled at less elite schools are placed in a position where underperformance is all but inevitable because they are less academically prepared than the white and Asian students with whom they must compete” he said.

Thomas, and his other eight colleagues all attended elite universities, a point not lost on Nelson, who took Scalia’s comment to also be a dig at historically black colleges and universities.

“In additon to denigrating an entire group of students, he also denigrated many of the institutions that have successfully served African Americans when a majority of the institutions in this country would not,” she said.

by Micah Singleton @MicahSingleton VIA www.theverge.com A legendary performance of ‘The Blacker The Berry’ and ‘Alright’

After being teased as a “very controversial” performance by host LL Cool J, Kendrick Lamar hit the 2016 Grammy stage and did not disappoint. The rapper delivered the performance of the night, walking out as part of a chain gang to perform “The Blacker The Berry” with his band locked inside jail cells.

Lamar followed up the striking visuals by performing “Alright” in front of a giant bonfire, and transitioned into a never before heard song utilizing some fast action camera work, before ending the his performance with the word Compton over an image of Africa in one of the most striking performance to hit the Grammy stage in years. The songs, both off Lamar’s critically acclaimed sophomore album To Pimp A Butterflyspeak directly to the modern day black experience in America, and his performance delivered that message home better than anyone could’ve hoped for.

To Pimp A Butterfly netted Lamar seven Grammy nominations this year (out of a total 11 nominations). Lamar took home four awards before the show began, and picked up another award for Best Rap Album at the beginning of the show. The project is up for Album of The Year, the last award of the night.

Lyrics

“The Blacker The Berry”

Six in the mornin’, fire in the street
Burn, baby burn, that’s all I wanna see
And sometimes I get off watchin’ you die in vain
It’s such a shame they may call me crazy
They may say I suffer from schizophrenia or somethin’
But homie you made me
Black don’t crack my nigga

I’m the biggest hypocrite of 2015
Once I finish this, witnesses will convey just what I mean
Been feeling this way since I was 16, came to my senses
You never liked us anyway, fuck your friendship, I meant it
I’m African-American, I’m African
I’m black as the moon, heritage of a small village
Pardon my residence
Came from the bottom of mankind
My hair is nappy, my dick is big, my nose is round and wide
You hate me don’t you?
You hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture
You’re fuckin’ evil I want you to recognize that I’m a proud monkey
You vandalize my perception but can’t take style from me
And this is more than confession
I mean I might press the button so you know my discretion
I’m guardin’ my feelin’s, I know that you feel it
You sabotage my community, makin’ a killin’
You made me a killer, emancipation of a real nigga

The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
The blacker the berry, the bigger I shoot

I said they treat me like a slave, cah’ me black
Woi, we feel a whole heap of pain, cah’ we black
And man a say they put me in a chain, cah’ we black
Imagine now, big gold chain full of rocks
How you no see the whip, left scars pon’ me back
But now we have a big whip, parked pon’ the block
All them say we doomed from the start, cah’ we black
Remember this, every race start from the block, just remember that

I’m the biggest hypocrite of 2015
Once I finish this, witnesses will convey just what I mean
I mean, it’s evident that I’m irrelevant to society
That’s what you’re telling me, penitentiary would only hire me
Curse me till I’m dead
Church me with your fake prophesyzing that I’mma be just another slave in my head
Institutionalize manipulation and lies
Reciprocation of freedom only live in your eyes
You hate me don’t you?
I know you hate me just as much as you hate yourself
Jealous of my wisdom and cards I dealt
Watchin’ me as I pull up, fill up my tank, then peel out
Muscle cars like pull ups, show you what these big wheels ’bout, ah
Black and successful, this black man meant to be special
CAT scans on my radar bitch, how can I help you?
How can I tell you I’m making a killin’?
You made me a killer, emancipation of a real nigga

The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
The blacker the berry, the bigger I shoot

I said they treat me like a slave, cah’ me black
Woi, we feel a whole heap of pain, cah’ we black
And man a say they put me in a chain, cah’ we black
Imagine now, big gold chain full of rocks
How you no see the whip, left scars pon’ me back
But now we have a big whip, parked pon’ the block
All them say we doomed from the start, cah’ we black
Remember this, every race start from the block, just remember that

I’m the biggest hypocrite of 2015
When I finish this if you listenin’ sure you will agree
This plot is bigger than me, it’s generational hatred
It’s genocism, it’s grimy, little justification
I’m African-American, I’m African
I’m black as the heart of a fuckin’ Aryan
I’m black as the name of Tyrone and Darius
Excuse my French but fuck you — no, fuck y’all
That’s as blunt as it gets, I know you hate me, don’t you?
You hate my people, I can tell cause it’s threats when I see you
I can tell cause your ways deceitful
Know I can tell because you’re in love with the Desert Eagle
Thinkin’ maliciously, he get a chain then you gone bleed him
It’s funny how Zulu and Xhosa might go to war
Two tribal armies that want to build and destroy
Remind me of these Compton Crip gangs that live next door
Beefin’ with Piru’s, only death settle the score
So don’t matter how much I say I like to preach with the Panthers
Or tell Georgia State “Marcus Garvey got all the answers”
Or try to celebrate February like it’s my B-Day
Or eat watermelon, chicken, and Kool-Aid on weekdays
Or jump high enough to get Michael Jordan endorsements
Or watch BET cause urban support is important
So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street?
When gang banging make me kill a nigga blacker than me?
Hypocrite!

A dispatch from the inaugural gathering of a proudly diffuse, rapidly growing, hyper-local movement for black lives.

The morning workshop portion on the first day of the gathering was over, and the afternoon plenary was the first time that many of the attendees had come together in the same room. Some were weary from driving halfway across the country to get to Cleveland. Some were distracted by the scarcity of conference housing. The workshop offerings, totaling almost 100, left others unclear about how to navigate this overwhelming weekend.

But as a procession of relatives of black people killed by state-sanctioned violence walked across the Cleveland State University stage, there was no doubt what this weekend was about: the defense of black bodies, the celebration of black collective resiliency, and the building of a movement the likes of which has never been seen. One by one, starting with the relatives of Emmett Till, each family member shared poignant memories of their murdered loved ones. We learned their favorite colors, their favorite sports teams, their nickames. Mike Brown Sr. told the audience that his son’s nickname was Mike-Mike and his favorite color was blue. Each family member concluded with the refrain, “This is why we fight.”

It was a devastatingly effective orchestration of humanity and loss, but not the day’s final word. As the session ended, audience members in the packed auditorium leapt out of their seats in delirium as Kendrick Lamar’s voice erupted through the sound system:

When you know, we been hurt, been down before, niggaWhen our pride was low, lookin’ at the world like, “where do we go, nigga?”And we hate Popo, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure, nigga
I’m at the preacher’s door
My knees gettin’ weak and my gun might blow but we gon’ be alright

The Movement for Black Lives had a soundtrack. Some of the songs may have been chosen from the playlists of the conference organizers and played during the plenaries, but most were improvised by the activists in attendance from all across the country. At any given moment during this three-day weekend, a dance, chant, protest song, or drumming session would spontaneously break out, with people asserting and luxuriating in their blackness.

Ever since Trayvon Martin’s slaying in 2012 and the subsequent acquittal of his neighborhood-watch killer, George Zimmerman, America has been reawakened to the daily terror faced by black people at the hands of law enforcement, vigilantism, and the justice system.

Through the crucibles of New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, and dozens of other less notorious battlegrounds, a new generation of black change agents has emerged—people who are organizing youth, queer, and transgender folks, women, immigrants, the differently abled, and other black communities. #BlackLivesMatter has been the rallying cry. The Movement for Black Lives gathering, held on the campus of Cleveland State University from July 24 to 26, was the first significant attempt to bring these organizers under one roof.

It was clear that the conference organizers had been overwhelmed by the response to their invitation. The original projections declared that “Hundreds of Black Freedom Fighters” would attend, but final estimates put the gathering at well above a thousand people. Chaotic scheduling updates were transmitted by text and mobile app, but humanity reigned even in logistics. Outside of one workshop door, a handwritten note announced that the session had been canceled “on account of the facilitator being tired as fuck!”

The selflessness demonstrated by the conference organizers was more than enough to ease whatever headaches these hiccups caused. Registrants had been instructed to determine themselves how much to pay in registration and housing fees based on their financial capacity. Legions of volunteers arrived almost a week in advance, on their own dime. The planning and organizing team, which included the three co-founders of #BlackLivesMatter, barely introduced themselves to the attendees, and there were no pictures or bios of them to be found in the program or on the official website.

The gathering was less about creating an agenda than it was about grounding the movement in black-on-black love.

This horizontal form of leadership and relinquishing of ego has emerged as one of several generational markers in this movement. There were plenty of elders, old-school black nationalists, and middle-aged nonprofit professionals in effect, but the weekend and its dominant sensibility belonged to radicalized, under-35-year-old social-justice organizers.

The Cleveland gathering was not only conspicuously devoid of white people but, unlike more traditional political and cultural events, there were neither headliners nor lionized personalities. Al Sharpton and the heads of the traditional civil-rights organizations were nowhere to be found—perhaps not only because of the skepticism with which they are regarded by young organizers but because they would have had to endure a conference in which they would have had no featured speaking role.

The workshops were conceived and provided by the participants themselves. Several hundred were proposed, and the final line up was decided by on-line voting. Sessions on political prisoners, the legacy of the Black Panther Party, queer and transgender leadership, reparations, and the intersection between nationalism, gender, and sexuality, stood side-by-side with sessions on healing and self-care, organizing for resilience, urban farming, and intra-community conflict resolution.

But what signaled the most significant break from the black political status quo was the space claimed by queer, transgender, and gender-nonconforming attendees.

On Friday night, a conference after-party was turned into a protest site after police removed a transgender conference participant from the men’s room of the Vault, a nightclub in Cleveland. The next morning, a contingent of transgender and gender-nonconforming folks lovingly but forcefully came on stage during a plenary session and took the conference organizers and the cisgendered attendees to task for not creating a safe and respectful environment for them at the gathering. They cited a litany of issues, including failing to establish gender-neutral bathrooms at the conference hall and not including preferred gender pronouns on name tags; not doing enough to train volunteers on how to appropriately engage transgender attendees; and not predetermining that the site of the after-party was a safe space for queer and trans revelers. The next day, the contingent administered a primer on how future gatherings—and the broader movement—could be more supportive of trans participation.

For a gathering that, up to that point, had set its sights mostly on external forms of oppression, it was a revolutionary moment of inwardly focused accountability, community building, and course correction. Queer and trans folks were not working at the margins of the movement for black liberation but had moved, quite literally, to center stage, where I suspect they will remain.

The obvious question is, what’s next? To the credit of the conference organizers, the gathering was less about creating a definitive agenda or a centralized leadership and coordination structure than it was about framing the moment in a legacy of resistance and grounding it in black-on-black love.

Of course, a set of guiding principles were included in the program; there were the perfunctory “next steps” strategy sessions at the end of the conference; and everyone in attendance demanded future gatherings. But the conference organizers astutely recognized that the gathering was really a networking hub and fueling station for a thousand self-powered movement engines.

Poetically, in the waning hours of the conference, as some participants were leaving to catch flights home, we received tweets and texts about folks from the gathering who had come to the defense of a black youth who was reportedly arrested by Cleveland police. Mobile video chronicled how they confronted the police officers and were attacked with pepper spray. These images were interspersed with texts from the conference network providing a jail support number.

For those of us waiting in the airport, glued to our phones, it was a frightening and anxious moment, and a confirmation of the seeming inevitability of physical confrontation with law enforcement that hung over the gathering. But even before the news came that the young person in question had been released by the police, I sensed that a certain peace had come to those of us waiting in the airport for further news. We had been at the gathering. We reveled in the passion, we witnessed the collective brilliance, and we were one with the mobilization of powerful black bodies. Yep, we know more shit is going to rain down on us, but we gon’ be alright.

Reactions from Beyoncé’s Grammy performance of notable gospel song, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” has drawn a great deal of attention from fans on social media. And while some may feel the international pop star slighted Ledisi from performing the track, who sang the song in the movie “Selma,” Beyoncé has revealed how personal the tune is to her family lineage.

Reactions from Beyoncé’s Grammy performance of notable gospel song, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” has drawn a great deal of attention from fans on social media. And while some may feel the international pop star slighted Ledisi from performing the track, who sang the song in the movie “Selma,” Beyoncé has revealed how personal the tune is to her family lineage.

On Monday, via her official website and YouTube channel, “Queen Bey” released an exclusive 8-minute documentary titled, “’Take My Hand, Precious Lord’: The Voices” highlighting rehearsal footage of her performance and interviews with her background singers sharing their thoughts on racial injustice.

In addition to the Grammy Award-winner recollecting childhood memories of her mother, Tina, playing Mahalia Jackson’s original version of the song, she also discussed singing the ballad in honor of black men including her father and former manager, Mathew.

“I wanted to find real men that have lived, that have struggled, cried, have a light and a spirit about them,” Beyoncé said in the clip. “I felt like this is an opportunity to show the strength and vulnerability in black men.”

“My grandparents marched with Dr. King and my father was part of the first generation of black men that attended an all-white school,” she continued.

“My father has grown up with a lot of trauma from those experiences. I feel like now I can sing for his pain, I can sing for my grandparents’ pain. I can sing for some of the families that have lost their sons.”

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LABProLib stands for Latino and Black ProgressiveLiberalism! We are not a news website. Our website catalogs online articles, events, photos, cartoons, selected powerful satire stories, and more that speaks to people of color and our allies. Most of the articles are complemented with photographs and graphs that has been appropriated into memes.